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“It is really happening. Floor prices across the board of OG collections from the first cycle, Bored Apes, Deadfellas, doing the whole thing. I I understand most people would think that this is nonsense, but it it it's it seems to me that there is a correlation between the flight from DeFi and people wanting to custody their ETH in cryptographically verifiable art, and I don't think that's a trend that's gonna end anytime soon.”

“Rough numbers, numbers suck on podcasts, and audio formats in general, but 67 odd bucks a barrel before the war. It gets to about 117. Now, yesterday it was down to 95 odd bucks. Today, West Texas Intermediate Crude down to $91 a barrel. Now, still meaningfully more than it was, obviously, before the war. But more than half the gain, well, the increase has been given back.”

“There is something to be remarked on with the apparently, I read this morning or yesterday, the ASX is almost back to its pre-war highs, pre-Ram war this is. And you're saying the US market is already back to there and above that level. And it's kinda, I think it's both justifiable and hard to justify at the same time.”

“The concept of TINA, you know, which is there, another acronym for there is no alternative. There's a lot of capital in the world, you know, you got to park it somewhere, you know, and particularly in a world where, despite inflationary concerns and the rest of it, you know, most governments are spending drunken sailors, that money's being pumped in, like, where does it go? Right?”

“The highs that it painted in January 28th of this year was the highest that the S&P had, was at which was exactly 7,000. And Ryan, as of today, we are at 7,036 on the S&P 500 So we are up into new all-time high territories as of today, the day of recording the 16th and also the 15th, two all-time highs in a row.”

“The SEC just gave DeFi a broker exemption, very material for a lot of the company's protocols, apps that we know and love. We'll talk about the significance of that and what we can do now. And also, the Bitcoin community taking quantum seriously, putting forward a quantum plan to free Satoshi's Bitcoins.”

“How do you go from the US dollar as the central currency to something else? Because there's nothing else out there right now that can replace the US dollar as a global currency. So I think that that transition, more than a collapse, is what's going to be painful, because there are going to be some businesses that find a way to get to the other side and others that struggle.”

“Europe has lived in the reflected protection of the US for 70 years and essentially been able to focus entirely on economy building, leaving defense and the expense of defending Europe to the US. So this is not just a US problem. The US might have more to lose than everybody else because it's been at the center of the post-World War II economic order. But it's not just the US.”

“We had the KelpDAO hack, which then led to a problem with toxic debt across all of DeFi, which led to an issue specifically on Aave, which is obviously considered the blue chip safest DeFi of, I I think, roughly 200,000,000. And we have sort of a JPMorgan early nineteen hundred situation where it gets everybody in a room and asks for a private bailout. So we have, I guess, a mix of different companies either sort of donating, I mean, Steny himself, I think, millions of dollars, or offering loans, but basically plugging up this whole I think it's $300,000,000 already has been pledged. This reeks, I think, on the surface of tarp, you know, a government bailout like 2008, but I think that's sort of a lazy comparison because it's voluntary and it's not forced and it's not the government.”

“We can justify the pricing if you assume that there's no catastrophic risk to worry about. But if you do bring in catastrophic risk, then the market becomes worrisome across the board. Whether it's Mag-7, not Mag-7, global equities, US equities, collectively, there seems to be too much of an acceptance that we'll figure a way through this without serious pain.”

“I think that transition, more than a collapse, is what's going to be painful, because there are going to be, you know, there are going to be some businesses, they're going to find a way to get to the other side easily, and other businesses are going to struggle more. But I think that struggle's got to be priced in more, and whether that means lower earnings growth or higher risk premiums, markets haven't quite decided yet.”

“Also, World Liberty Finance had some drama in the week. This is, remember Trump's DeFi project. It was caught doing some on-chain shenanigans. We're going to explore that and ask the question, is this the new cycle FTX? Did World Liberty just pull a sandbag, McFreed? We got Justin Sun weighing in on that.”

“Wouldn't you imagine if institutions are looking at this, they see the power of utilizing smart contracts as a better way, obviously, for yield and and lending, but won't wanna do it in a decentralized manner. And this may actually, ironically, push them to use the technology to build centralized walled gardens to offer yield for their own customers and not be a part of the larger system where there's potential contagion. Like, why doesn't Goldman Sachs just have a Goldman Sachs, like, you know, it's not DeFi, but the centralized lending put it all together themselves and close it off.”

“None of these STRs, whatever you call them, none of them are gonna make it except Sailor. I mean, maybe BM and R. I'm not even sure about them. But if they don't make it, the token market is, like, it's all toast. Now I don't see, hate to be like mister negative here, but I think we go for another round down Bitcoin because there's too much money that's just dying to get the fuck out of XXI and NACA and all these, you know, like, none of these companies have done shit, man.”

“It's just tough to get keep getting kicked while you're down, Scott. Like, we're we're down 90% on anything else that we've bought that's not Bitcoin. Right? Like, some people down more. Things have been lost. Like, retail's just got barely like, almost no heartbeat left. And then the little bit of ETH maybe that you, you know, that that someone had trying to earn a little bit of yield, you know, hoping to get a little bit more capital for the next run.”

“I was at a Galaxy event hosted by Mike Novogratz at his house in New Orleans last November, and Paul Tudor Jones came and kindly spoke to the group, giving his whole history and how he got into Bitcoin and how he approached everything. And one thing that is really, I think, very important about him, he's obviously one of the most recognized and important hedge fund managers of all times, frankly, especially in the macro space. And he was really the first to publicly adopt Bitcoin and push it and even write a paper about it.”

“Look. It's preferred, man. It's preferred over MSCR. I get 75% loan to value on my on MSTR. I went to my bank and I said, hey. I want you to move my treasury position or at least half of it into STR in into STRC. You're giving me 3% on the bonds. I get 11 and a half on the fucking, STRC. They did it the next day, dude. Risk management had never seen that trade.”

“Jones was, actually, this is a really interesting point, Scott. He wanted 35% market decline could hit capital gains tax revenue, widening the federal deficit and pressure of the bond market. So that's kind of a nightmare loop as stocks fall, tax receipts weaken, the deficit looks worse, bonds get hit, and investors are forced to sell more than what they own. And he also cited some of the big IPOs. He said that a flood of new share supply from companies expecting to go public combined with insider lockup expirations could create pressure similar to the setup before the dot com bust.”

“You can't take out 20 percent of the ability to create commerce through oil and not have a recession. If it stopped, if it stopped now, and not restarted, we end up in recession. And that's just kind of, the power is kind of mathematically factual as you get. You can't make and do the things we do without having a decline in economic growth from a couple of percent to something less than zero.”

“Trump did something that I don't really think anyone saw coming, at least most people did not see coming. He just blocks the Strait of Hormuz. It's like, oh, you guys are going to block it, we're going to block it. And now we are securing the Strait to allow for ships who are not going to Iran. So any country going to the UAE, to Saudi Arabia, those ships can go to those ports so long as they are not going to Iranian ports.”

“He was very emphatic about it, pointed out quite a few reasons why he believes that the stock market is once again near a top. Now he's been saying that for quite a while. But mostly that US equity market cap is 252% of GDP right now. Dotcom peak was 02/1970. You know, previous crashes were far, far less.”

“Meanwhile, Saylor's stretch is new STRC, not that new, but new into the zeitgeist is printing billions of dollars. The market clearly likes it. It's putting a very healthy bid on Bitcoin. Is this the best instrument Saylor has ever created? Will it be the catalyst to send Bitcoin to all-time highs, or alternatively, will it be our demise?”

“Sentiment is everything in the short run. Well, I'd actually say no, sentiment is everything, full stop, period, right? It's just like sometimes that sentiment is more objectively informed and more centered, more fundamental kind of factors, but it's vibes all the way down, right? At the end of the day, that's all the market is, is some people that have a thing, and there's other people that want the thing, and then they bid and offer prices until consensus is reached.”

“After the Second World War, we put together an economic order centered around the US and the US dollar, and that's coming apart. You can see an acceptance that it's coming apart. You saw it last week in the political discussions you saw in Europe about where we're going next. But clearly, the old system is coming apart. There's nothing to replace it. That's where the catastrophic risk component comes in.”